Aren’t we all a lover of bills?

Of course not, but they are a necessary evil and expense to us all. But how often have you examined exactly what your bill is for?
There are of course some bills which are quite simple to interpret such as a mobile phone bill. You have your tariff or allowance and you’re then changed for additional usage over that amount; 500 mins, various texts and internet usage, quite straightforward. Alas all are not this simple, especially when your business is consuming high amounts of electricity.

Let’s consider your electricity bill. Do you know what all the charges are for? Do you know all the technical terminology used in your bill?

I’ll be honest, not all of us do. Quite scary when you consider how much some businesses are paying per month on energy costs; tens of thousands of pounds in some cases, such as large factories or businesses across various sites etc.

Analysing some terminology lets unpick the puzzle that is the electricity bill.

Triad charges can be very costly. A client of ours was charged £1,183 for the 90 minutes of electricity usage. Red unit charges can also be very costly to your business. The same client for one month received a bill with Red Unit costs amounting to a £1,032.84. This is the time when there weren’t many people on premises working via computers sitting on standby, lights still on etc. This ultimately results in the lowest amount of use, with the highest expense. These costs all add up and our client ultimately had to pay out £15,246.18 for just one months’ use of energy!

It’s only once you can see the problem, see the expenses, you can begin to implement solutions to be more cost effective during this incredibly expensive time.

The National Grid has forecasted its “lowest ever” peak level demand this summer and said the increase in the UK’s solar PV generation capacity has contributed to it.

The National Grid’s summer outlook – published today – has estimated that its peak demand this summer will be 37.5GW, approximately 900MW lower than the corresponding figure last year.

This drop has been attributed to a marked increase in solar PV generation capacity within the UK, which National Grid says has risen from 2.4GW in February 2014 to 4.4GW in February this year.

The report owed this drop in peak demand to how the period of peak summer demand – typically between midday and the afternoon – coincided with increased generation from embedded solar installations.

And the report also forecasted that summer peak demand will continue to drop in the coming years as additional solar generation capacity is connected to the grid.

The National Grid has estimated that solar PV generation capacity will reach 5.5GW by February 2016, equivalent to an added 90MW of capacity per month for the next year.

The report comes little more than a week after the Department for Energy and Climate Change said that solar PV generation in the UK soared 93% throughout 2014 and reached 3.9TWh, more than 6% of the UK’s total renewable energy generation in 2014.